Tales of Graces F

When Sony were establishing themselves in the console space with the first Playstation, it was in large part thanks to the Final Fantasy series they cemented their position on top of the heap. It helped bring forth a wave of Japanese role playing games and among the ones to surfaces was Namco's Tales of series, even if it debuted on Super Nintendo back in 1995.

Lots have come to pass since, and JRPG's have lost their dominant position on the European market, but as a late comer to this region it doesn't bother Tales of Graces F. Instead, were treated to a game that remains very faithful to its roots, and especially during the first hours of the game it's easy to think that this is a game from the 90's.

Within five minutes you've assembled your first group consisting of brothers Asbel and Hubert Lhant, the purple haired Sophie (you won't be shocked to find she's suffering from amnesia), and the characters come across as forgettable. Asbel is your brave and adventurous type, who is perhaps even more predictable than his overly cautious and nervous brother Hubert, while Sophie hasn't got the slightest idea of who she is or where she's from.

The real catalyst of the story is a catastrophic event that involves prince Richard, who after having been hidden away from the world for most of his life teams up with Asbel and the rest of the gang. The event results in a seven year leap in the story, and this is where it really takes off. It's a brave way to tell a story, even if it is a bit problematic to begin a game intentionally predictable and the introduction drags on for a bit too long.

The Tales franchise has undoubtedly been as much about the combat as it's been about the story and the characters, and this quickly becomes apparent in Tales of Graces F. It doesn't take more than a few seconds for the first battle to commence, and while that battle is easily won with some button mashing, the system expands with layer upon layer as the game progresses.

The combat in the Tales series has always been different from other JRPG's as it features a more action based concept, full of bombastic attacks, but with a nice level of strategy built into it. The strategy is added in thanks to the Chain Capacity points this time around, and this is the factor that decides the number of attacks you can chain together before you need to take a breal. Simple attacks cost a single CC point, while summoning magic and other stuff is more costly, and therefore you need to consider how you want to spend your points. It could have been a passive system that rewarded conservative play, but instead you're rewarded for well timed blocks and such, with extra points so it pays to take risks.

The fun really picks up once you've gotten a few new abilities to use in combat. Instead of just rewarding you with these as you level up, you earn these by equipping "titles". Titles are progressively earned and each contains five abilities, that you can learn permanently if you earn enough SP points in combat while wearing them. You can only equip one title at a time, and as you learn the first ability much quicker than the last you can choose to switch titles frequently to learn lots of abilities or stick to one and specialise in that field.

In addition to this you will also craft your weapons through a simple yet deep system - that appears to have taken its inspiration from Level-5's Dark Chronicle - and it works flawlessly.

With so much depth available it's a shame that Namco Bandai haven't done more to cover the fact that this is an upgraded port of a Wii title. From a technical perspective it looks as if it could been released on Playstation 2 - and the higher resolution isn't kind on character models and textures made for lesser hardware. Tales of Vesperia from 2008 did a much better job as it was made for Xbox 360 originally, and it feels strange to see a new game in the series that falls way short of the last game in this regard.

Despite its shortcomings Tales of Graces F is a solid adventure throughout, and the combat system offers an experience that once you really get hooked on it will give you more than your money's worth.

I would have loved to have seen a story that didn't take this long to get going, and a more balanced difficulty level and a more appealing game from a technical standpoint. Personally, I prefer to dust of Tales of Vesperia for another round, but Tales fans hungry for more will be pleased with this latest entry in the series.